By Howard Fischer
Captiol Media Services
Has Taylor Swift peaked? No, not on the question of her overall popularity or ability to get fans to pay money to pack stadiums to hear her.
But Taylor was not among the Top 100 names parents chose this year, according to records kept by the Arizona Department of Health Services.
It’s not that Taylor was never popular. In fact, it showed up in the Top 10 among girls in 2016 and 2017.
But less clear is whether that had anything to do with Swift and her music career or if is just a function of the fluctuating choices in what parents name their newborns.
Consider: Taylor actually was the fourth most popular name for girls — back in 1996 when Swift herself was just 7 and living in Reading, Pennsylvania.
So what is popular now in Arizona? More parents of newborn girls chose Olivia this year than any other. It also was the No. 1 name in 2023. Rounding out the Top 5 are Emma, Isabella, Sophia and Amelia.
But the record shows there’s a certain volatility to what Arizonans name their girls.
In 2000 — about the time that the current crop of parents were being born — their own parents were mostly partial to Emily, followed by Ashley, Samantha, Alexis and Jessica.
And if you want to go back another generation or so, you’ll find that Arizonans who were giving birth in 1975 were picking Jennifer as the top name. That was followed by Amy, Michelle, Heather and Melissa.
Some names popular just a decade ago seem to have fallen out of favor entirely. Abigail, for example, was No. 8 in 2014. This year it dropped to 40. And Zoey, which was the 13th most popular name a decade ago? It is nowhere in the Top 100 this year.
Even more telling, of the Top 10 names at the turn of the century, only three are on that Top 100 list this year — and none from 1975.
For boys, the top choice in 2024 was Liam. It appears to have some staying power: It was not only a repeat of 2023 but also was in the No. 2 slot a decade before that.
Following that are Noah, Mateo, Sebastian and Oliver. Here, too, there are generational differences.
The top name for boys born in 2000 was Jacob. After that the list goes to Michael, Daniel, Jose and Anthony.
Go back, even further to 1975 and you find that new parents that year were picking names like Michael, Jason, Christopher, David and Robert.
But even with those shifts, there is far less volatility in what parents name their boys. Michael, for example, was at the top of the list in 1975. And while its popularity has declined, it still comes in this year at No. 12. Another perennial favorite — and also from the Bible — is Daniel. It was in the Top 10 in 1975 and remains there today.
Still, others names that were popular one or two generations ago have fallen so far out of favor that they are nowhere on this year’s Top 100, names like Jason, Robert and Brian.
And then there are a few that, quite frankly, never seemed to make the list.
Like Howard.
